Days Gone By

SKETCH CHALLENGE NO. 6

About the Challenge

Wooosh! That’s how fast this week went by. It seems like I didn’t even have time to relax … which is why I am so grateful that today is Friday. And that I have the weekend to decompress. And you get the weekend to sketch.

Last weekend, despite it being a 3-day weekend for me, was quite the blur. Friday was a scheduled day off from work, which was spent taking Kirby to his first Vet appointment. Looks like Kirby may be a little bit more than a year old, but boy! Does he still have all that puppy energy! And lots of people seem to think he’s got some Dachshund in him, but I maintain he’s what the AKC would consider a 13-inch beagle (meaning he’ll never get taller than 13 inches).

We ended up getting a harness vest for Kirby, because the poor boy kept tugging on the leash, causing his collar to essentially strangle him whenever we went on a walk. I swear if he wasn’t on a leash, Kirby would run off into the night … probably chasing after some squirrel or rabbit that catches his eye or his keen sense of smell. And believe me, the little Kirb-ster is *much* faster than one might anticipate!

Which now brings us to our challenge: Flash vs. Quicksilver. And yes, Kirby was (once again) the inspiration for this week’s commission.

I would give you any version of Flash to sketch (since DC has this *thing* about having multiple embodiments of the same superhero), but I’m specifically going to request the Barry Allen Flash. I think the reason I like this incarnation of Flash because of his outfit. The Jay Garrick Flash seems too dated for my liking. And although the Wally West version is very similar to Barry’s, I keep thinking of the outfit he wore as Kid Flash. While Bart Allen’s Flash is the one I’m most familiar with (from Smallville, of course), I have this tendency to write him off as Impulse rather than Flash.

So yeah, Barry Allen. Here’s the lowdown on how he became Flash. Barry was a police scientist (think CSI) who had a reputation of being very slow & deliberate and frequently late to most appointments. One night, as he is preparing to leave work, a lightning bolt shatters a case full of chemicals and spills them all over Allen. As a result, Allen finds that he can run extremely fast and has matching reflexes. He then donned a skin-tight red outfit sporting a lightning bolt and adopted the name The Flash after his childhood comic book hero, Jay Garrick. Allen was so well liked that nearly all Flash incarnations that came after him are often compared to him. In fact, Batman once said “Barry is the kind of man that I would’ve hoped to become if my parents hadn’t been murdered.”

Quicksilver, also known as Pietro Maximoff, is the twin brother to the Scarlett Witch (Wanda Maximoff). They first appear together fighting against the X-Men as members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, led by none other than Magneto. Unknown to all of them at the time, Magneto turns out to be their biological father. Eventually, they left the Brotherhood and crossed sides by joining the Avengers and then as part of X-Factor. That said, Quicksilver’s mutant ability is superhuman speed. He’s been known to be pretty irritable and arrogant; mostly annoyed by the perception that the rest of the world is moving in slow motion.